The "Clean Shirt" Premier.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXIII, Issue 7357, 3 November 1898, Page 4

The "Clean Shirt" Premier.

A PAGE OF EARLY HISTORY. Our cablegrams on Thursday stated that the Rev. T. S. Forsaith, New Zealand's " clean shirt" Premier, is dying in New South Wale 3. This old colonist, father-in-law of Mr T. M. Macdonald, of Jnvercarglll, is referred to in a very readable article in the June number of the Gentleman's Magazine by Mr J. F. Hogan, M.P. Mr Hogan thinks that too many colonial pioneers have been allowed to pass away without any record of their nation-building days, so he he gives an outline of the career of the Rev. Thomas spencer Forsaith, the Premier ot the much derided Clean Shirt Ministry in New Zealand, whom he met at Parramatta, and who, he says, is preparing his own autobiography for publication. Mr Forsaith is "at the advanced age of 84 as fluent, keen-eyed, active, and mentally vigorous as many men who are 30 years his junior." His father kept a haberdasher's shop, * • The Little Black Doll," at Shoreditch, and after giving his son an education at Fancourt's j-ioxton Academy, placed him in a draper's shop of a friend. Young Forsaith ran away to sea, and after three voyages to Bombay was at twenty four mate of the Hooghly, which conveyed some 260 convicts to Sydney. After a, second voyage to Sydney in the Lord Goderich, on the return journey of which Mr Forsaith distinguished himself by securing a drunken chief officer, he settled in Hokianga, and combined farming with trading in timber. In 1841 the Maoris raided his property under tha impression that he had desecrated a burial ground. In 1854, when Representative Government was granted to New Zealand, and Major-General Wynyard endeavored to organise a mixed Government of the old Imperial heads of departments and four leading members of the Legislature, under the Premiership of Mr J. ta. Fitzgerald, the latter, finding that he could' not conduct business hampered by irresponsible officials, resigned. Mr Forsaith, representing the minority, was then sent for to form a new Government. He did so, but his " Clean Shirt Ministry " held office but two days—the last of August and the first of September. Mr Hogan thus describes the origin of the name :

Mr Forsaith faced the House as Premier on September Ist, and in the course of the customary ■ opening statement casually dropped a homely phrase that was so harped upon during the subsequent diacussion that it solidified into the sobriquet of his' shortuvea Government. Sailors, as we all know, are characterised by an engaging frankness, uriconventioiiality, and breeziness of speech, and it was probably due to his former maritime training that Mr Forsaith took the House so completely into his confidence as to explain that " the summons from the representative of Her Majesty to form a new Ministry took me completely by surprise. T was working in my shop at the time and as quickly as possible I put on a clean shirt and waited on his Excellency." In Hansard an apparently revised version of the speech appears, in which Mr Forsaith is represented as informing the House in general terms that " he was working at his own business at 'he time, and even had to change his garb before waiting on his Excellency." But the unsophisticated reference to the clean shirt was repeatedlyquoteafor sarcasticpurposes in the want-of-confidence debate that followed. Foi instance, a certain Mr Revans is reported as remarking: " Touching the speech of the hon. member for th 6 northern division, it amounted to this: that on •Tuesday he put on a clean shirt, and afterwards, wilhin an amazingly short period, the most extraordinary scheme of policy he had ever heard of was brought forward to the world. What great events from little causes spring! That was the result of changing a shirt!" On a subsequent occasion, when similar gibes were uttered in the House, Mr Forsaith felicitously retorted that "although he had been clothed with but a little brief authority his Ministry had come and gone in , clean garments, and that was the happiest condition he could hope : for the hon; member when his time came !" The explanation was. simple. A ship had just arrived from London with a number of cases of drapery consigned to Mr nnWt «in WaS helping his assistants to unpack these oases when the message from the Acting-Governor arrived, and as the process of unpacking goods is nearly always attended by dost and discomfort, he deemed a change of clothing desirable before starting to confer with the representative of the Queen. -f Mr Forsaith has latterly, Mr Hogan tells us, been "calmly spending the evening of life in the midst of the orange groves at Parramatta, a venerable, vigorous, and" versatile octogenarian colonist." It is worthy of mention that on the 17th May last Mr and Mrs Forsaith celebrated their diamond wedding, having, then com-? pleted 60 years of married companionship.